Popular passages

Page 119 - It is in the assumption of the existence of the contradictory of the original predicate that an explanation of the apparent anomaly may be found. That assumption may be expressed in the form, 'Some things are not P'. The conclusion 'Some not-S is not P...

Page 11 - Such assertion simply reiterates as final a distinction which grew up and had meaning in pre-evolutionary science. It asserts, against the most marked advance which scientific method has yet made, a survival of a crude period of logical scientific procedure. We have no choice save either to conceive of thinking as a response to a specific stimulus, or else to regard it as something "in itself," having just in and of itself certain traits, elements, and laws.

Page 112 - a is father of b" " b is child of a ;" and if one hereby means " child of a father " the relation child of is, in so far, the inverse of the relation father of. If a relation is polyadic, then such symbols as R (abcd . . .), meaning " a, b, c, d, etc. (taken in a determinate order or way which indicates the place of each in the relational «-ad in question), stand in the (polyadic) relation R.

Page 22 - It must follow that the practical use, which has developed it, must have stamped itself upon its inmost structure, even if it has not moulded it out of prerational instincts. In short, a reason which has not practical value for the purposes of life is a monstrosity, a morbid...

Page 15 - The subject in every judgment of Perception is some given spot or point in sensuous contact with the percipient self. But, as all reality is continuous, the subject is not merely this given spot or point.

Page 73 - Ration as playing some part in knowledge, and as at any rate capable of contributing some factor to the ideal fabric of reality. But it assumes the external shape of ignorance, or at least of failure, and the paradox consists in this — that in negation the work of positive knowledge appears to be performed by ignorance. The contradiction arises, as we have seen other contradictions arise, from the adoption by thought of a shape which at best expresses it but partially, and the retention of that...

Page 11 - He deals with the question of the eternal nature of thought and its eternal validity in relation to an eternal reality. He is concerned, not with genesis, but with value, not with a historic cycle, but with absolute distinctions and relations.

Page 164 - Why and how should a perfect, absolute, complete, finished thought find it necessary to submit to alien, disturbing, and corrupting conditions in order, in the end, to recover through reflective thought in a partial, piecemeal, wholly inadequate way what it possessed at the outset in a much more satisfactory way?